Where a garage once stood, the Sugar Hill Development rises like a charcoal escarpment interrupting the steep descent of busy 155th Street from the rocky spine of upper Manhattan. This prominent corner at St. Nicholas Avenue is suffused with African-American history. The Sugar Hill neighborhood was once the center of black wealth, especially during the 1920s cultural ascendance known as the Harlem Renaissance. The building's saturated color draws attention to itself, while a rose pattern embossed in its precast-concrete panels recalls one often found in wallpaper from the '20s.
The Sugar Hill Development has something to say. With apartments for people with very low incomes (including some formerly homeless residents), an early-childhood-education program serving 200, and a related 17,500-square-foot Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling, “the project represents the epitome of what we want to do in terms of housing,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at a press event in June. De Blasio was elected last year partly on his pledge to build and preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing, though Sugar Hill began under Michael Bloomberg.
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